Typically, the process of making and packaging comestibles, such as a confection or chewing gum, is time-consuming and involves a significant amount of machinery. For example, the process of making and packing gum products can include mixing and producing a finished gum as a non-uniform output, extruding and forming the finished gum into loaves, conditioning the loaves of the finished gum, extruding the loaves into a continuous thin sheet of the finished gum, rolling the continuous sheet through a series of rollers to a uniform reduced thickness, scoring and dividing sheets into individual scored sheets, conditioning the individual sheets in a conditioning room, dividing sheets into gum pieces, and packaging the gum pieces. Such processes of making and packaging gum products are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,254,373 assigned to the predecessor of interest of the present assignee, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/352,110 assigned to the present assignee; the teachings and disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties to the extent not inconsistent with the present disclosure.
During the process of making and packaging comestibles, the comestible may stick to one or more of the system components, such as the forming rollers or the cutting instruments for example. This sticking can result in an undesirable adhering of the comestible to the manufacturing components and harm the manufacturing. Such sticking may even require that the manufacturing system be stopped temporarily to lubricate the components or recalibrate the system. Powder dusting materials are commonly used as an anti-sticking agent during the formation of a comestible. However, powder dusting materials can accumulate over time, resulting in a buildup on either the product or the components of the manufacturing system. In addition, application of a powder dusting material requires significant clean up time when a line is changed over and often requires an expensive removal system.
The present invention is directed toward improvements and advancements over such prior systems and methods of making and packaging gum products.